Chinese policeman under investigation for allegedly beating woman appealing for compensation
- Officer denies claim that he used violence to detain schoolteacher petitioning for payment after daughter was partially blinded at school
Authorities in eastern China are investigating claims that a police officer assaulted a woman seeking compensation after her daughter was blinded in one eye at school.
In a preliminary report released on Monday, authorities said the officer denied hitting Li Xiujuan, a schoolteacher from Feng county in Jiangsu province.
On Sunday, Li posted a letter on WeChat saying that she and her husband were “ready to leave the world” after none of her demands for “reasonable compensation” for her 10-year-old daughter and an investigation into police violence were ignored.
In March 2018, her daughter was blinded in her left eye when she was hit by the zips of two classmates’ uniforms. Li asked the school and the classmate’s parents for 360,000 yuan (US$51,200) in compensation.
She rejected offers of 2,000 yuan and then 15,000 yuan for medical expenses and decided to appeal through a petition to higher authorities, The Beijing News reported on Monday.
The preliminary report found that the parents could not agree on compensation because there was no direct evidence to prove that the daughter’s injury was caused by her school friends.
In April 2018, Li took her daughter to a hospital in Beijing. She also bypassed the petitions department in Feng county and tried to appeal to the National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration in Beijing on grounds of child safety, the local government said on Monday.
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In her online letter, Li said that in March this year she planned to return to Beijing but was visited at home by four local government officials who asked her to cancel her trip.
A Feng county police notice issued on Monday said four police officers arrived half an hour later to detain Li for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.
“She was very angry when we came to find her and she did say she was going to Beijing for the petition,” Shanghai-based news site Thepaper.cn quoted Ding Pin, an official from the Feng County Bureau of Education, as saying.
Li claimed in her letter that she was beaten by one of the officers. She said she was forced to admit that the trip to Beijing in March was for petitioning and accept a week-long detention.
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She refused to sign papers admitting the offence and said in her letter that surveillance by the bureau at work had triggered depression.
“None of my demands are being heard, I just want to receive reasonable compensation for my daughter’s case and an investigate into the police violence,” Li wrote.
Police investigators said their inquiries into Li’s allegations against the officer would continue.
